Certain schools make quite a difference to graduates' earnings, even if the chosen career and number of years in the field are the same.
The Wall Street Journal set out to measure the difference in average salaries for the median graduate in technology, consulting and finance and rank public and private schools by their annual salary premiums. Data was sourced by a third-party analysis of data from Lightcast and Glassdoor.
"The effect can be huge," the Journal concludes, with the top-ranked colleges for technology tied to more than $45,000 to $32,000 a year in salary more than the median college graduate in the field.
Below are the top 10 private and public colleges for salaries in technology, as ranked by the Journal, with the complete listing of 20 schools for each category found here.
Top 10 private colleges for technology salaries
1. Harvard University
Annual salary premium: $45,019
2. Princeton University
Annual salary premium: $43,405
3. Stanford University
Annual salary premium: $42,637
4. California Institute of Technology
Annual salary premium: $40,868
5. Yale University
Annual salary premium: $39,064
6. Brown University
Annual salary premium: $37,253
7. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Annual salary premium: $33,848
8. University of Pennsylvania
Annual salary premium: $32,479
9. Duke University
Annual salary premium: $31,888
10. Carnegie Mellon University
Annual salary premium: $31,869
Top 10 public colleges for technology salaries
1. University of California-Berkeley
Annual salary premium: $32,781
2. U.S. Naval Academy
Annual salary premium: $23,378
3. University of California-Los Angeles
Annual salary premium: $22,640
4. University of Washington-Seattle Campus
Annual salary premium: $20,511
5. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Annual salary premium: $18,567
6. California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
Annual salary premium: $18,383
7. San Jose State University
Annual salary premium: $16,729
8. University of California-San Diego
Annual salary premium: $16,335
9. University of California-Davis
Annual salary premium: $15,928
10. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Annual salary premium: $15,741